MUSEUMS
Water Tower Museum
Within a year of its foundation in 1835 the Chester
Mechanics' Institution resolved to establish a museum
of working models, natural history, and antiquities.
Benefactors gave objects for display and the city
council offered a lease of Bonewaldesthorne Tower
and the Water Tower on the city walls (often called
the Upper and Lower Water Towers) at a nominal rent.
An appeal raised £290 and the museum opened in
1838. Its hours were noon to 8 p.m. each day except
Sunday. (fn. 1)
An admission fee of 6d. probably restricted entrance
to well-off visitors, though a reduced rate of 3d. was
later introduced for railway excursionists. A camera
obscura, highly popular with visitors, was installed in
1840 and an observatory in 1848; in 1864 the Roman
hypocaust and other remains recently discovered in
Bridge Street were reassembled at the foot of the tower.
The museum made a profit and was a source of great
local pride, (fn. 2) but sophisticated visitors were conscious
of its limitations: the American writer Henry James in
1872 called the towers 'receptacles for the dustiest and
shabbiest of tawdry back-parlor curiosities'. (fn. 3)
The museum came into the ownership of the city
council along with the rest of the Mechanics' Institution's assets in 1876. (fn. 4) The city recognized at an
early stage that the Water Tower was unsuitable for a
museum, but the council committee responsible had its
hands full with arrangements for the new public
library. The surviving exhibits were put into order
and the museum opened each summer between the
hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. (fn. 5)
The Water Tower was closed in 1901–2 while the
adjacent city wall was rebuilt; when it reopened in 1903
it attracted 12,000 visitors over the season, paying 1d.
to get in. (fn. 6) In 1907 the exhibits included models of the
Grosvenor Bridge, Overleigh Lodge, and the Northgate,
and collections of militaria, prints, ethnography, and
curiosities. (fn. 7) The Water Tower was closed to the public
at the end of summer 1916. After taking advice from
Professor Robert Newstead, the honorary curator of
the Grosvenor Museum, the council decided in 1921
not to reopen it but to offer the collections to the
Archaeological and Natural Science societies and sell
whatever they did not want. (fn. 8)
Both towers were then let for non-museum use, (fn. 9) but
by the early 1930s the city was aware of their tourist
potential and in 1948 let them again on condition that
the public be admitted. (fn. 10) In 1954 they were brought
under the Grosvenor Museum, which reopened them
in 1962 as an historical museum of medieval Chester,
showing dioramas and local finds. (fn. 11) After refurbishment
c. 1980 they were still open in 1995. (fn. 12)
Grosvenor Museum
The city council saw its acquisition of the Mechanics'
Institution in 1876 as an opportunity to create a proper
town museum, combining the existing collections of
the Institution and the Natural Science and Archaeological societies with new galleries for sculpture and
pictures. The existing Institution building in St. John
Street was unsuitable for museum use and no alternative site immediately became available. (fn. 13) Meanwhile
the societies, both of which had been collecting since
their inception, and the Schools of Science and Art
were all looking for permanent premises. An appeal for
funds for a new building was launched in 1883 with the
duke of Westminster as president and the dean of
Chester as secretary. The duke gave a site in Grosvenor
Street, which was enlarged by purchase, and £4,000
towards a total building cost estimated at £10,650.
T. M. Lockwood designed an assymetrical museum in
red brick with stone dressings in a free Renaissance
style. When opened in 1886 it had the societies' natural
history and archaeological displays and an art gallery
on the ground floor, leaving the two upper floors for
the (by then amalgamated) School of Science and Art.
The building was managed by a committee on which
the two societies together had equal representation
with the school. (fn. 14) Both museum and school soon
needed more space and a wing was added at the rear
in 1895. (fn. 15)
Figure 179:
Grosvenor Museum, T. M. Lockwood's design, 1884
From 1892 to 1912 the museum also housed a
technical day school funded by the city council, and
after the city became a local education authority under
the 1902 Education Act it took responsibility for
the building as a whole, including the museum. (fn. 16)
The museum's voluntary management committee
approached the council as early as 1904 with the
proposal that the council take over its duties, and
the council was keen to do so despite the objections
of the Chester Traders' Association to supporting a
museum from the rates, but the transfer was delayed
until 1915. (fn. 17) Under the new arrangements the corporation leased parts of the building to the societies for
meetings and displaying their collections. (fn. 18) Management of the building by the city council prolonged its
use for further educational purposes, and the whole
building (except for a lecture theatre used by the two
societies) was turned over for museum use only when
the School of Art left in 1962. (fn. 19)
In 1936 the council commissioned from the nationally renowned archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler a
report on the city's future museum provision. It
began to act on his recommendations in 1938 by
agreeing with the societies to take over direct management, (fn. 20) but further progress was delayed by the Second
World War. The honorary curator, Professor Robert
Newstead, who had served in one capacity or another
since 1886, died in 1947, and his brother Alfred retired
as part-time assistant curator in 1948, (fn. 21) when the city
appointed as its first professional curator the Roman
archaeologist Graham Webster. During his time
(1948–55) existing collections were catalogued and
redisplayed, assistant curators were appointed, and
the creation of period rooms in a house in Castle
Street behind the museum was begun. (fn. 22) The Grosvenor
was thereafter in the hands of museum professionals
and the augmentation of its collections, increase in its
staff and activities (including archaeological and educational), and improvement of its displays were almost
continuous. (fn. 23) The city council retained control at local
government reorganization in 1974 despite being
urged by the curator and the Archaeological Society
to turn it over to the county council. (fn. 24)
The museum's most important collection, of national importance, was the Roman sepulchral monuments mainly discovered during repairs to the city
walls between 1887 and 1892. (fn. 25) Other collections of
local significance were Anglo-Saxon pennies acquired
mostly in the 1950s, Chester-hallmarked silver, the
topographical watercolours of Moses Griffith (1747–1819), and the 'consciously picturesque' and hugely
popular watercolours of Victorian Chester by Louise
Rayner (1829–1924). (fn. 26)
Other Museums
Chester's ever-growing appeal to tourists led to a
proliferation of small museums in the 20th century.
Already by 1900 the upper floor of King Charles's
Tower on the city walls housed a small private
museum, (fn. 27) though it underwent many vicissitudes.
The city council let the tower in 1912 to Edward
Davies, who showed a collection of artefacts connected
with the history of Chester and was given an extended
lease in 1917, despite being in arrears with the rent,
because Professor Newstead commended the value to
the city of his local antiquarian knowledge. (fn. 28) Davies's
collection remained on display (fn. 29) and was given to the
city in 1955, after which King Charles's Tower was
refitted by the Grosvenor Museum as an historical
museum of the Civil War in Chester. (fn. 30)
Stanley Palace, bought by the Chester Archaeological
Society for conversion to a museum in 1865 but sold
back to the 15th earl of Derby in 1889, in the early
1920s housed 'a museum of 1,000 curios'. (fn. 31)
The Cheshire Regiment, which had a collection of
old military equipment on display in the officers' mess
at the castle by 1903, established a museum in the
Agricola Tower there in 1923. In 1972 it moved to new
rooms in the former barrack block as the Cheshire
Military Museum, still under regimental control but
augmented by the collections formed at Dale Barracks
(at Moston, just north of Chester) and by the Cheshire
Yeomanry at the Drill Hall in Albion Street. Artefacts
belonging to other regiments were added c. 1978. (fn. 32)
After Holy Trinity church in Watergate Street was
turned into a guildhall in 1963 (fn. 33) a small museum was
established in the former vestry to display documents
and artefacts belonging to the city guilds. (fn. 34) Another
redundant city-centre church, St. Michael's in Bridge
Street, was converted by the city council in 1975 into
the Chester Heritage Centre, publicized as Britain's
first. Designed as a focal point for Chester's partication
in European Architectural Heritage Year (1975), it
contained displays about the city's historic buildings
and their conservation. (fn. 35) The Grosvenor Museum later
rearranged the displays to form an introduction to the
history of the city and its buildings. (fn. 36)
The most substantial of the private-enterprise
museums of the late 20th century was established in
1974 by Nickerson Investments Ltd., which turned the
former Grosvenor St. John's school in Vicars Lane into
the British Heritage Exhibition. (fn. 37) Its main feature was a
full-size reconstruction of part of the Rows in Victorian
times. In 1976 the Centre attracted 65,000 visitors, to
the Grosvenor Museum's 119,000. (fn. 38) Nickerson sold
the Centre in 1984 to a local businessman, who
reopened it as the Chester Visitor Centre with craft
shops inserted in the 'Victorian street'.
The other commercially run museums were Chester
Toy Museum, opened in Lower Bridge Street in 1983; (fn. 39)
the Dewa Roman Experience, opened in 1993 in a
former motorcycle showroom in Pierpoint Lane off
Bridge Street, which featured reconstructions of a
Roman galley and streets and an archaeological excavation; (fn. 40) and On the Air, a museum of broadcasting
opened in Bridge Street Row in 1994 as an extension
of a business selling vintage gramophones. (fn. 41) Both the
Toy Museum and On the Air, however, closed in the
late 1990s.